HOAX — Infected Blood Added to Cadbury Products

According to a “warning” post currently circulating on Facebook, a Cadbury worker has been deliberately adding his HIV infected blood to Cadbury products.

The post features an image of a handcuffed man being escorted by a group of police officers and claims that the pictured prisoner is “the guy who added his infected blood to Cadbury products’.

The message warns you not to eat any Cadbury products for the next few weeks because of the contamination. It asks you to forward the information on so that others will be aware of the danger. Supposedly, the warning was shown yesterday on BBC News.

The Post is Just Another Silly Hoax

But, thankfully for chocolate lovers everywhere, the claims in the message are utter nonsense. The message is just a silly hoax in a long line of very similar HIV contamination hoaxes that have targetted a number of food and beverage products.

Thus, it seems clear that the lazy prankster who created the Cadbury version of the hoax simply used the earlier Pepsi version as a template and altered a few details.

HIV Cannot Spread in the Way Described

Moreover, the US-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notes that it has never received any reports of HIV infections caused by contaminated food. The CDC also points out that a person would not become infected even if they did consume food or drink that contained HIV infected blood:

In an article about HIV transmission, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) notes:

You can’t get HIV from consuming food handled by an HIV-infected person. Even if the food contained small amounts of HIV-infected blood or semen, exposure to the air, heat from cooking, and stomach acid would destroy the virus.

The CDC further explains:

HIV does not survive long outside the human body (such as on surfaces), and it cannot reproduce outside a human host.

Sending on such false health warnings will help nobody. If you receive one of these fake HIV contamination messages, do not spread the hoax further by sharing it. And let the person who posted it know that the message is a hoax.

I did realize that there was something fishy with the cadbury story that one of my friends posted in our whatsapp group….. Upon searching the internet I found this website…. Your work is good and we need to tackle the spread of these disgusting fake news.